Readers Are Unpredictable

To continue my train of thought from the previous two posts—on what the humanities can do, and why we need not worry so much about whether such a claim instrumentalizes them—I want to add the following qualification: it is impossible to say with any confidence, “This is what studying the humanities (or reading good literature or attentively watching good films and the like) will do for you.” There is much that engaging with philosophy, literature, and the arts could do for us, but so much will depend on our disposition: how we approach these things and what we seek to gain from them. So much depends on our hermeneutical framework and whether we have (or at least seek to cultivate) the virtues needed for the kind of reading that has a chance of changing us for the better. 

Regarding our hermeneutic: Are we seeking to learn or be challenged by the text, or only to have our biases confirmed? Are we seeking to understand what the author is intending, or are we projecting our own thoughts and feelings onto the text? 

And regarding the requisite virtues: Are we practicing patient attentiveness? Are we both discerning and charitable? Do we have the humility to be receptive to new or challenging ideas?

Of course, the worth and excellence of the text studied also matters. Some books or films will be much better suited to aiding our moral formation than others; indeed some can only be corrosive. But Karen Swallow Prior is right to say in the introduction to her book On Reading Well that, if reading is to help us become more virtuous, we must practice certain virtues as we read. It will not do to say that if only so-and-so would just read Republic or Pride and Prejudice, it will reshape their vision of the good life. Reading is not a “just add water” solution.

Unfortunately, there are very good readers out there who are terrible people. I think of the scene in the Coen Brothers’ remake of The Ladykillers (2004), in which the lead criminal played by Tom Hanks waxes poetic about the power of literature: “I often find myself more at home in these ancient volumes than I do in the hustle-bustle of the modern world. To me, paradoxically, the literature of the so-called ‘dead tongues’ holds more currency than this morning's newspaper. In these books, in these volumes, there is the accumulated wisdom of mankind, which succors me when the day is hard and the night lonely and long.” He is seen enjoying his reading, but clearly it hasn’t softened his conscience. On the other hand, it’s possible for good people to be poor readers, prone to take passages out of context or just not have the desire to sit down and read at all.

But if anything should give us pause about making grand promises about what the humanities will do for the renovation of a soul or the renewal of a culture, let’s consider the greatest and truest story ever told, which does indeed have the power to change a heart: the gospel. “The Parable of the Sower” in the gospels shows that even the gospel will fall on deaf ears, be rejected, or even just forgotten and abandoned in the course of the cares of life. The Spirit must be at work to make the heart receptive, otherwise mere hearing does nothing.

Lacking God’s omniscience, for us the response of a hearer or a reader is unpredictable. A person could read the Bible and be drawn to faith and repentance, or twist its words to justify selfish ambition or abuse, or think it’s boring, or say, “How inspiring and life-affirming!” and miss the point. And if that can be true of a person’s encounter God’s holy, life-giving Word, how much more uncertain it is whether even the best works of fallible humans in the fields of literature, art, and philosophy will make a positive difference! A person might not have the knowledge of how to read well, or may simply choose not to.

That’s a downer note to end on, I know, but it’s worth sitting with and pondering, and this post is long enough already. 

Instrumentalizing the Humanities?

This post is a sequel to the one I wrote at the beginning of the month responding to a blog post by Alan Jacobs about why the humanities matter. Building off of what Jacobs had written, I suggested we need to study the humanities to help us more wisely determine what “is really conducive to our human flourishing in the longterm.”

But often when I think about what the humanities are for or try to justify to myself their usefulness in a world skeptical of their value, I hear in my head the suspicious naysayer that cautions against “instrumentalizing” them. Shouldn’t we enjoy art for art’s sake? Aren’t we cheapening literature by trying to promote it for what it “does” outside of being an aesthetic experience? Aren’t we running the risk of turning art and literature into propaganda?

Another recent-ish post on Jacobs’ blog, titled “Intrinsic Values,” objects to this objection. Jacobs writes that he has “never known what [calling something ‘valuable in and of itself’] means — or even could mean. Because: if you ask people to say more about valuing something for its own sake, they end up saying that it gives them pleasure or delights them or fascinates them. But to pursue something because it delights or fascinates you is not pursuing it for its own sake — it’s pursuing it for the sake of the delight or fascination.” In other words, to say that we read literature or promote the arts for their “intrinsic value” turns out to be nonsensical as soon as we ask ourselves to spell out why we think that is so important.

It has also occurred to me that the people who most warn against instrumentalizing the humanities—writers, artists, critics, and academics—also instrumentalize them: they make livelihoods out of making works of literature or art, or out of saying things about them!

It is certainly possible to use art and literature in ways they weren't intended to be used (authorial intent matters!), but there is no way not to use art and literature except to have nothing to do with them. The question is not whether we are using art or literature for something else, but whether that something else is closer or further away from the telos of the particular thing being used. It's not a question of using or not using, but of using or misusing.

Alan Jacobs on the Humanities

Two posts that Alan Jacobs put on his blog earlier this year keep rattling around in my brain and have helped me articulate for myself why studying the humanities (history, philosophy, literature, and the arts) matters, for all of us, whether we are inside or outside an academic environment.

Here’s his first post, “A Small Parable,” from January 28. The parable is more than half the post, but it I think it falls within “fair use” guidelines to quote in full.

Once there was a man named Jack who owned a nice house. One day, though, Jack noticed that one end of the house was a little lower than it had been. You could place a ball on the floor and it would slowly roll towards that end. Jack was a practical man, so he called Neil, another practical man he knew, who worked in construction. Neil said that he could jack up that end of the house and make everything level again. Jack agreed, and Neil got to work.

Jack had a neighbor named Hugh. Hugh was interested in many things, and watched closely as Neil jacked up the low end of the house. With Jack’s permission, he looked around the basement of the house. All this made him more curious, so he walked down to the town’s Records Office and got some information about Jack’s house: when it had been built, who had built it, and what the land had been used for before. Hugh also learned a few things about the soil composition in their neighborhood and its geological character.

Hugh paid Jack a visit so he could tell Jack about all he had learned. He stood at Jack’s door with his hands full of documents and photographs, and rang the bell. But when Jack answered he told Hugh that he didn’t have time to look at documents and photographs. He had a very immediate problem: that end of his house was sinking again. In such circumstances Jack certainly couldn’t attend to Hugh’s ragbag of information and discourses about ancient history. After all, Jack was a practical man.

When parents, employers, teachers, and school administrators emphasize degrees or courses in “practical” subjects like Business and Engineering at the expense of degrees or courses in subjects like English or Classics, they risk falling into the same shortsightedness as Jack. Practical classes can help us learn what is possible, but they aren’t as good at helping us discern what is beneficial. To quote Dr. Ian Malcolm from Spielberg’s Jurassic Park, “your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should.” Studying the humanities, as the name implies, is about studying what it means to be human. Once we better understand what makes for true human flourishing, we’ll be in a better position to judge whether X business strategy (no matter how lucrative) or Y technology (no matter how efficient) is really conducive to our human flourishing in the longterm.

I love the Sara Groves song, “Scientists in Japan.” The chorus goes:

Who's gonna stay here and think about it?
Who's gonna stay?
Everybody's left the room,
There's no one here to talk it through,
Now stay, stay, stay.

Whether it’s in a high school or college classroom, or a book club, or a discussion with friends after watching a movie together, engaging with the humanities is a way for us to slow down and “stay here and think about it.” 

This post of mine is long enough already, so I’ll write about the other Alan Jacobs post another time.